


The Beginnings of Belief (The Believe in Beginnings Remix)

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Beginnings, Emotions, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Fluff, Foot Massage, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Laughter, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James woke up surprised, and naked, and with another body stretched out long and lean beside him in the cradle of the bed. The body had ginger hair and Irish-fair skin and a small adorable mole near one shoulder-blade, and was presently busily snoring into James’ hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginnings of Belief (The Believe in Beginnings Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Believe in Beginnings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/705661) by [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl). 
  * In response to a prompt by [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  No safe story, beyond wips and co-written works. Previous remixes have 'remix' in title and tags. 
> 
> Recent fandoms:  
> X-Men First Class, X-Men Days of Future Past, X-Men RPF  
> Merlin, Merlin RPF  
> Doctor Who

James woke up surprised, and naked, and with another body stretched out long and lean beside him in the cradle of the bed. The body had ginger hair and Irish-fair skin and a small adorable mole near one shoulder-blade, and was presently busily snoring into James’ hair.  
  
James lay very still so as not to disturb him, and tried to think.  
  
He’d always had a fairly reliable internal clock; as much as he loathed early mornings, he could wake himself up at any hour he cared to, and he could make pretty accurate guesses about the current time of night. Just gone four am, he decided, lying on his back and looking at a crack in ceiling-plaster overhead. The hour of stray cats and paper-sellers, of eighteenth-century footpads and vagabonds, of lost memories and the gulf between giddy reckless tipsiness and oncoming dull sobriety.  
  
Michael had touched him as if he were real. Michael had seen him among all the reflections, in the mirror-panelled banquet-room.  
  
James had, of course, noticed Michael. Had noticed, and appreciated: the slim waist, the way the man filled out his dress shirt, a gunmetal grey that reflected in shimmering eyes. Michael’d ordered his wine with dinner in a voice that suggested he knew a great deal about wine, and Michael had laughed—at some random joke, at a witticism made by his companion the previous evening—like a man who knew how to laugh. James had always fallen hard and fast for competent men, for men who enjoyed life, who could appreciate the slow sweet smoky burn of a whisky or the deliciously maddening deliberate caress of a hand over bare skin. He knew that about himself. He knew.  
  
Michael breathed out, a small huff of air over James’ left ear. James swallowed. Watched the plaster-crack. It didn’t grow or change, just wandered along its time-worn way over to the corner, where it met classical crown molding and stopped to have a conversation.  
  
A three-date rule, he’d said, half-joking. Michael had laughed, playing along, playing out the game like alternating shots across a billiard table. That game, dinner, an afternoon’s flirtation and a kiss.  
  
Michael had ended up here in his bed. They’d both known where they were going. James had, yes, known.  
  
He shut his eyes. Thought: he was their indiscretion. The happy couple. Both of them. He’s the sort of man who would be that. And now he’s mine.  
  
He opened his eyes. Michael hadn’t stirred: a sprawling expanse of Irish-beanstalk legs that took up most of James’ country-house guest bed. The bed, like the house, was historic and over-decorated; vines festooned the bedposts and gilt-painted picture frames boxed up forlorn wildflowers above the headboard. They’d enthusiastically shaken that headboard four hours earlier. Four hours and fifteen minutes, assuming he’d been correct about the time.  
  
He’d just found out why he’d been invited to the engagement-celebration party. Not friendship at all; not that he’d expected closeness, the host had summoned hordes, and James barely counted as an acquaintance. But he’d not expected to be a form of entertainment. He’d told Michael the truth, caught offguard and off-balance. A distant relation among the wealthy sparkling guests. A relation, and the connection came through—  
  
Through a man James hadn’t spoken to in years. A man who’d walked out of his life, and his sister’s, with no explanation.  
  
He’d had nothing to say. Had slipped away without any interaction: he didn’t know the supposed relation, he damn well wasn’t going to beg for money, and he did not care if his father’s family ever acknowledged him, and that was even true. Nevertheless: the callous coldness of the act, of himself being used as theater, had cut deeply. He’d found himself in the banquet room with no clear memory of the intervening steps. He’d found himself surrounded by tasteless gaudy gold and mirrors, amplifying glitter to unnerving heights, and pieces of himself shimmering pointedly back from all angles: inescapable.  
  
And Michael’d come in to move place-cards around before dinner, because Michael was a kind person and did not want to force bride and groom to stare at his face throughout a meal, unlike their host, who’d arranged the seating.  
  
And Michael’d come in to move place-cards, and had found James there.  
  
An indiscretion. An indiscretion who teased him and got him to smile and tempted him to bad behavior.  
  
So very bad. Here, in his bed: so very bad. Because Michael _had_ teased him and made him smile and looked at him and really _seen_ him, and James was very afraid that he could fall into this and never surface again: lost and loving it, in the curl of long fingers round a billiards cue, in the span of firm hands gripping his waist, in the paradox of Celtic accent and assertive playfulness and gentle soothing until James forgot to feel alone and teased right back.  
  
Michael felt real. Not a mirror’s shadowy cross-flipped glimpse; not a ghost from out of the past. A living, breathing, laughing person. With kisses like scotch and sweetness and fire.  
  
And with, suddenly, open eyes: a yawn, a rumble, a flop of legs across James’ own. “Time’s it?”  
  
“Half four.” And six minutes. Best guess.  
  
“Ah.” A pause. “You’re awake.”  
  
“I’m…yeah, and so’re you. Fair’s fair.”  
  
“You’re radiating worry,” Michael said, sitting up. “Come here.”  
  
“You can’t radiate worry. It’s not like heat.” He wanted to lean in. He was—  
  
He found himself wrapped up in lengthy Irish arms, a chin resting atop his head. “So. Is it the chandelier? Because that was givin’ me nightmares, too, all spiky and brittle and glass. Banshees would love it, I’m thinking.”  
  
“They’d settle right down and raise a family. Baby shrieking ghosts. Breaking the mirrors, we can hope.”  
  
“Now, that’d be bad luck.” Michael touched his cheek, infinitely tender. “And we’d not wish that on the happy couple. Maybe on our host. Is that it?”  
  
No. It’s you. You and your long black coat tossed over my chair and my jumper on the floor and the way my heart’s beating under your hand. “No,” James said.  
  
“Three-date rule. Too fast?”  
  
“No…”  
  
“Then it’s me?”  
  
“No! Fuck,” he added hastily, “no. Not—I don’t know. I brought you scotch. We’re in my room.”  
  
“Spectacular scotch it was, too,” Michael noted, lips brushing his temple: not a kiss, merely the soft puff of words, and somehow exactly what James’ head and heart ached to feel. “I liked it best on your lips.”  
  
“You didn’t kiss me then,” James said, half-heartedly, mostly because he was feeling spiky and brittle and glasslike and a lot like wanting to tuck himself up into offered body heat and never move away.  
  
“No, but I imagined it. And now I’ve tasted you.” Michael was grinning; he could feel the curve of that expressive mouth. “So. Best.”  
  
“What _are_ we doing,” James said, and shut his eyes. Not looking at the sticky condoms in the trash bin, the sock that’d landed drunkenly on a lampshade. “I don’t even know you. You don’t know me.”  
  
“You’re rubbish at billiards,” Michael said, “and you came over to bring me a drink when I didn’t have one. What do you do for a living?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m getting to know you. What do you do?”  
  
“I,” James said. “Um. I…well, I…” No good reason not to, he supposed; Michael clearly hadn’t recognized his face or name. “I host a children’s reading programme. On the BBC. We…read books. On the show. Because it’s a reading programme.” Oh God.  
  
Michael sat upright. “Wait. I know that one!”  
  
“You _do?”_  
  
“My sister’s kids love it! The wolf voice for Red Riding Hood, all the voices, all the characters—that’s _you?”_  
  
“Ah…yes?”  
  
“Oh fuck,” Michael said, “oh, fuck, you’re a sort of celebrity,” and James tried to make a face and snort derisively at the same time, which probably meant he ended up looking like a demented jackrabbit, but oh well. “I am _not_ a celebrity!”  
  
“I said sort of.”  
  
James choked on air, wavering between offended and vastly amused.  
  
“No, that’s brilliant,” Michael said, “what you do, what you do for those kids, the way you love books, the way you get them to love books too, that’s kind of the most amazing thing ever, everything you give them,” and then they regarded each other for a while, sitting on the rumpled bed among antique shadows and faded-pearl moonlight.  
  
“How’d you know it was half four, anyway?”  
  
“I always know. I have…” James waved a hand, though he wasn’t sure Michael could see in the dark. “A thing.”  
  
“You have a thing.”  
  
“I—oh, stop laughing.”  
  
“No. Sorry.”  
  
“Anyway you liked my having a thing, earlier,” James said, and then began laughing along: helpless not to, in the dark with Michael’s warmth beside him.  
  
“I completely enjoy your thing,” Michael said, crossing arms behind his head, leaning back comfortably against the headboard, unashamedly naked. “So do you know what time it was when I first laid eyes on you?”  
  
“What? How would I know that, I’m not a magician, and I’m certainly not in your head,” James pointed out. “So, no.”  
  
“You might be. A magician. I just thought you might.”  
  
“Well, I don’t know what time you first looked at me.”  
  
“But you know what time you looked at me,” Michael surmised, lips twitching. James wanted to kiss him, or possibly punch him in the arm, because of the smugness.  
  
“I wouldn’t tell you,” he opted for, sticking cold toes beneath the sheet, “if I were a magician. You told me you were interested in bad behavior. Indiscretions. You haven’t told me what you do for a living, anyway.”  
  
Michael tossed the sheet away, tugged James’ feet into his lap, and started rubbing warmth back into them. James couldn’t figure out how to protest, and then, somewhat to his own startlement, didn’t want to.  
  
“Well,” Michael said, hands cheerfully kneading an instep, “my parents run an inn, a bed and breakfast, back home in County Kerry, and my dad taught me how to cook…” He paused. For effect, obviously; his voice was dancing.  
  
James, willingly playing along, melting into bonelessness under the decadence, inquired, “But you aren’t a chef?”  
  
“I didn’t just want to do what my parents did. So I went to law school, thinking I’d change the world and save some people and right some wrongs, but it was too heavy, too dry, all those weighty texts…”  
  
This time James sat up, thanked God for yoga and the resultant flexibility, and thumped him on the shoulder. “Get on with it, you wanker.”  
  
“I dropped out of law school,” Michael said, “and I play the accordion in a band.”  
  
“You do not.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“What band?”  
  
Michael told him.  
  
“Oh God,” James said, “oh God, of course I've heard of, I’m a fan, I’m a groupie, I’m that groupie, the one who goes home with and gets fucked into oblivion by the smoldering sexy accordion player—” and had to put a hand over his mouth to hold back laughter: abrupt and weightless and inexplicably bright.  
  
Michael now looked a bit concerned. “Is that…are you okay? Are we?”  
  
“Okay?”  
  
“Well…yes.”  
  
“Ask me when I’m not being star-struck. Um. Six minutes past two.”  
  
“What—oh. Wait, really?”  
  
“That first afternoon. You showed up in jeans and that black coat. And you looked at the house, and you whistled.”  
  
“Why didn’t I see you?”  
  
“I was in the kitchen. I like talking to people who cook. Better than being near our host, and also I worked in a confectioner’s shop for a few years. To help out round home.” He added, “My feet adore you, by the way,” and Michael smiled again, toothy and warm as sunshine in the night.  
  
“Confectioner’s?”  
  
“I’m fantastic at cream cakes.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael mused, smile turning positively irreverent, “you know something about cream, then, you and your thing…”  
  
“Oh God,” James said, and tried to put a pillow over his own head, and then said, “Seriously I don’t know what we’re doing here, I don’t understand this story, I thought you just wanted, and then there was a foot massage,” and then he stopped because he couldn’t quite breathe.  
  
Michael was quiet for a few seconds—forty-two, James’ head supplied—and then said, slowly, “I’m sort of done with. Um. The youthful indiscretion part. If you were wondering.”  
  
James tried not to whimper at his own idiocy. The silken vines, coiling indolently up the bed-frame, merely shrugged.  
  
“I mean,” Michael said, “I feel like smiling when I see you. Smiling. Come to London with me.”  
  
James dropped the pillow. It bounced off the side of the bed and hit the floor. Next to Michael’s discarded shirt. Not subtle in the least. “What, _now?”_  
  
“Did you want to stay?” Michael glanced around the room, and by extension the entire bruise-dark weekend. “I will if you want to. But I also have a motorcycle outside. And a flat in London. Please.”  
  
“You can’t just say please and expect me to say yes!”  
  
“I’m asking because I want to,” Michael said. “Please.”  
  
“I have my own bike,” James said, lying astoundedly on his back on the hideously overwrought bed. He was considering it. He was insane. He wanted Michael to kiss him again, and he wanted to make jokes about cream cakes and see springtime-hued eyes light up with that smile.  
  
“You have a bike,” Michael said, “and you bake, and you’re a magician. You’re perfect. Please.”  
  
“We’ve barely met.”  
  
“I make a really excellent beef Wellington.”  
  
“I’m sort of fifty percent easily corrupted vegetarian.”  
  
“Vegetable Wellington.”  
  
“Oh yes,” James said, “you know how to woo a man, veg in puff pastry, exactly what I needed,” and grinned upwards, at his loyal ceiling-crack companion.  
  
“Please,” Michael said. “James.”  
  
“Yes,” James said, “yes, all right, yes, let’s—go to London, let’s go together, everything, yes,” and Michael stared at him through the gradually lightening velvet of night and asked, disbelieving, “Yes?”  
  
“Yes,” James said again, and Michael kissed him, and the time ticked over, five minutes to five, and blossomed into a future.


End file.
